got_quiet

I haven't been able to keep up completely with my Libby hold habit. A few books I had to just let go without starting them, including one about modern sea piracy that I did want to read, so I've stuck myself back on the queue.

I'm currently mid read on two different books, and I'm not enjoying either of them. But I'm not enjoying them in a way where instead of just being bored and stopping I'm getting aggravated and the reaction is driving me forward as some sort of psychic self-harm. They're starting to turn a little into hate reads.

The first book I'm trying to get through is Babel by R. F. Kuang. The premise is that the industrial revolution is driven by a magic involving linguistics and silver. And the blurb says the main character gets to take a stand against imperialism.

It's just so... ugh. I had picked it up and put it down a dozen times in bookshops because worldbuilding that engages with language is right up my alley, but the blurb always made me suspicious and I would put it back. A little while ago it was sitting on a display at the library so I thought, well, no risk there and I borrowed it. But it is turning out to be the sort of hamfisted lecture that I was worried it might be. And so far the worldbuilding has been disappointing. I'm not super far in, only to chapter 4, but I can only continue by making note after note of complaint after what feels like every other paragraph. I am hoping that eventually an interesting character will show up, or something interesting will happen, but so far no dice.

I wanted to hold off on specific gripes for after I was done with the whole thing but just starting to write about this book has now gotten me into sporking gear so here are a couple things I noted so far. They are by far not the only details I took issue with, but they're bits where I was like... huh? And they're kind of nitpicky details that I wouldn't have spent much thought on if they didn't sort of demonstrate what feels like a broader problem with the book so far, which is that no one seems to behave with a consistent logic beyond trying to make some sort of very basic point about how colonialism and racism are bad mmkay.

So a few examples of moments that annoyed me:

Overall, my mood as I read this book has so far largely been, "Why?!" We'll see if that is the mood that continues.

I've basically disappeared because OWL is on again and I'm spending almost every spare second watching. and most of my posting about it happens on the subreddit so I usually don't have much to say here about it. Guangzhou is no longer tragically awful, which is great. Mixed rosters are still showing a ton of strength, also great. The overall exports environment continues to be trash and things get a little worse every day it seems which is not great. The meta this season has so far been relatively diverse but diversity of meta has never been a thing I care all that much about.

I've gotten a little bit of reading done before OWL interrupted everything. Finished the next Whyborne and Griffin book, Necropolis.

I also ended up buying Wall World, which was a game that I had played during Steam's latest demo event. It was a little more shallow than I was hoping, but for a chill sort of grindy game I liked it. I ended up beating it over the course of about 3 days. There's not much in the way of progression or choice. You just dig out caves and what you get you get, and for a while you're very under powered, and you just keep getting jumps in efficiency as you go. Now that I finished it I don't know if I'll play it again, which is probably a good thing because I ended up playing it till 3 am over the weekend and should probably delete the game from my hard drive to prevent it from happening again.

First of all, it's a YA book, which fine, I do enjoy some YA, but on the about to leave high school end, while this book feels like it's on the about to enter high school end. The characters are all immature in a particularly juvenile way. A lot of the conflict is clique/mean girl/popular kid type stuff and I was bored with that when I was in the thick of it. I have no interest in it now as an adult. A lot of the themes and structure of the book likewise feel engineered for kids who have never read a book with a fantasy creation myth before, or who are being introduced to moral lessons for the first time. There's just not much meat there.

Secondly, the main character is trans. I generally shy away from trans narratives because they are just a minefield of triggers. It's wonderful books with trans characters exist, and this book does things pretty well, but I just get an itch in my brain when a lot of stuff like binding and dysphoria come up. I'm trying to disassociate here. Please leave me alone.

But most significantly, and possibly the largest objective issue I'm having with the book is that I just can't suspend my disbelief enough to let it take me where it wants to take me. The plot is sort of based off of the Aztec ritual games where the losers get sacrificed to keep civilization safe from evil, so it has a sort of Hunger Games feel but with a cool focus on Mexican myth. But it also is set in the contemporary world so there's TV and tiktok and Instagram and everything. And there's this split between the "Golds" who are the cool jocks expected to win everything, and the "Jades" who are gods but uncool and less powerful and get treated like average boring people for the most part even though they are in fact gods and the main character for example has wings and stuff like that.

The Jades don't get any training at all, even basic "be a decent god training" and all I could think was that this was so Teo could be sympathetic and have to fight hard to compete even though he's literally a god just like the rest of them, and on the first trial he's already having sudden bursts of power ups, and just generally it's one of those books that are too transparent. I can see the structure and I can see the calculation behind the writing decisions and sometimes I can see why something is awkward, because the author wanted this or that even if it didn't fit, so I'm distracted.

There's also basic step by step issues. I can't figure out what's going on here for example. This line: "Teo took the seat on the other side of Niya from Xio." Makes me think that the seating order had Niya in the center with Teo and Xio flanking her, right? But then a few sentences later: "Teo agreed, bumping shoulders with Xio." How? There's a whole person in between? When I read I visualize things so when suddenly I can't figure out how something happened it always throws me off. Maybe it's a minor gripe but it's the sort of thing that needles. Or have I got the language of the first sentence backwards? Is Xio supposed to be in the middle based on that statement? I don't think so but maybe I'm missing something.

Even though I couldn't really see past the author I still enjoyed some of his obsessions. He clearly likes describing clothes. There's a costume change every scene it feels like, with everyone's ensembles lovingly described at every opportunity. All of the little theme cities are nicely described too. This place clearly fits in a very whimsical sort of fantasy, and the worldbuilding was pretty good in that respect.

Some more spoilery stuff below:

Read the second Whyborne and Griffin book and enjoyed it about as much as the first, which was a lot. The mystery was still fun, Elliot, the guy from Griffin's past, was fun to hate, Whyborne remains an adorable nerd and Griffin's insecurities are extremely attractive to me. When Elliot was like, "When I met Griffin he was in the process of getting spitroasted" in order to disrupt their relationship I was like, "Yes, talk about how much of a hussy Griffin was, more sordid past please." I want something to grab Griffin and make him suffer more, and would look up fic for it, but I've got like a dozen books to go and am waiting for the next one to come off hold, and maybe after I've gone through them all I'll take a look at what's on offer.

I'm also now a little sad that the covers are so photoshop. The two guys on the covers don't really reflect my internal visualization of them and again there's not much art out there, and what is there reasonably sticks to what's close to the covers. I was impressed when I hit the Carry On fan art cause there's actually a ton of it, but it doesn't appear to be typical of books. So I'm kind of on my own with visualizing them I guess.

Christine continues to be attracted to danger like a high powered magnet and she makes a great best friend along for the ride.

Next up I'm back in to YA territory and already getting a little annoyed at it a few pages in. It's another book club book, The Sunbearer Trials, and so far it's just started off with a creation myth that is both overly long and entirely cliche. I put the book down after the exposition dump but I still plan on finishing it, I'm just not overly enthusiastic about it at the moment.

I finally finished Mass Effect 3, and it felt like a comedy of errors all the way through. I did finally get my big smooch with Kaiden, and honestly, him lying in the hospital bed did it for me more, but I can at least check the "smooched Kaiden" box off my to do gaming list. I also managed to -not- get Jacob and Samara killed, so that makes a grand total of two people that I did not completely fuck over on this run.

After cleaning up a couple of sidequests I figured it was time for the end game, and it was a complete cluster fuck. First thing that happens is Cortez dies. I looked it up and it says that if I don't spend enough time with him he just gets himself shot out of the air, but I stopped to check on that mother fucker constantly and he had nothing to say, so I don't see how I can be responsible for his poor flying. Like there were side quests for him and everything that just never triggered or pinged for me. I did spend the majority of the game thinking, "It's weird how there's like no loyalty quests or any real interaction with any of the squad this time." I was -looking- for it, so I don't know how I missed all of it.

And to top it all of at the final choice... I couldn't figure out which side was which option. Maybe the little kid's explanation was too long and I lost my concentration or something but it just gave me two different colored ramps and I was like, ok but... which is which?! So I started half way up the left ramp, thought, no, this one will probably destroy the reapers since it's on the left and destroying the reapers was the first choice offered, and since I sided with the Geth I'd feel bad just genociding them right after they came to help us out and also I like Edi so I will try the control thing. So I went right, then got locked into a prompt to shoot at the machine without ever interacting with anything (how is this the way to turn something on?) and couldn't walk away from it! So in the end I did the choice that I didn't want to pick and murdered Edi and the Geth. And of course the game doesn't let you save before big choices so I'd have to play a chunk again to see the other ending.

I just... wtf. I don't recall having all these sorts of problems when I played one or two but three felt like a small mess from start to finish. I suppose my canonical Shepard is a total fuckup who managed to somehow thread the needle to something barely adequate as an outcome. Poor Kaiden has terrible taste in men.

I got a haircut a couple days ago because my brother's wedding is coming up and I didn't want to be in photos with a half-assed mullet, but I went to someone new cause my usual barber was on vacation, and I don't know how I feel about the cut. I feel a bit like... an Asian Hitler when I look in the mirror. Hopefully this is just my weird anxieties about my appearance and no one else looks at me and thinks the same lol. It's a bit of a messy cut too, like the edges are kind of rough... but still better than a mullet I guess. Maybe I should figure out how to give my hair some body, but I just.. cannot be assed to do anything but put shampoo in it.

I went to the Demon Slayer world premier tonight! It showed the final two episodes of the previous season, and the extended first episode of the new one, which felt about as long as two episodes. I think a number of people (including myself honestly) either forgot or didn't know exactly what would be shown during the event. I was pretty sure we'd be seeing new stuff, but my memory is ass and when the Entertainment arc episodes started showing I wasn't sure what I was getting. It didn't help that the episodes were not really cut for theater, and so I ended up sitting through three credits rolls throughout the whole thing. A handful of people, maybe 4 or five, ended up leaving at the end of the Entertainment District arc, presumably unaware that there was more, which really sucks for them because the whole point of the event was to get a sneak peek at the new content.

Even if the show had just been the old stuff, watching the Tengen vs Gyutaro fight on the big screen was great. And I think this was the first time I saw those episodes with subtitles, so there were a couple points where I was like... oh, that was what they were saying lol. It was a little frustrating cause whenever there are subs on I think to myself. I fucking understand all of those words and the grammar and it makes perfect sense to me, but without the subs being able to catch the meaning is tough. It's the 90% rule in action I guess.

Anyway, the first episode of the new season was hype. It looks like there's going to be little to no Inosuke and Zenitsu in it though. I've managed to remain spoiler free from the manga so I'm looking forward to whatever heart wrenching plot comes up, and of course the fights.

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I'm also trying to decide if I want to join a fic exchange. I have always enjoyed the gifts I've gotten from exchanges, but have also almost always been disappointed in the fic that I wrote myself. Writing is stressful and I'm too much of a perfectionist in my own work. I'm not really comfortable pretending writing doesn't make me miserable either. I think one of the first exchanges I ever did, like a decade ago, I had in the note that writing it was tough and the only comments I got was that it was rude to say so lol. Plus back when I tried exchanges I had the luck of getting non-commenting defaulters multiple times in a row. So maybe once has a giftee ever acknowledged the gift I gave them.

Eh, I stopped trying to participate in exchanges a long time ago, and I should probably stay away.

I've had a minor game binge detox so I went back and finished up the Steam demos that I had put in my queue. Of course it's my luck that the three I played last were three that I thought were pretty good, after hitting a series of duds.

Overboss - The demo was a simple solitaire tile game. I felt like the mechanics remind me of a well known board game but I couldn't recall what it is was, and then when I looked it up I found out that Overboss /was/ at first a board game, and maybe this is just the official digital version, which is maybe why I thought the mechanics were interesting. The rules are very basic. You set down a series of tiles on a grid, the setup of the game tells you how many points each tile gives you, you count your total score at the end, the end. The vs. and campaign mode weren't available so I don't know if they're any good. I did think that the brief solo game I played was a nice casual thing, and I enjoyed the pixel art a lot.

Flamekeeper - The store page says this is like Hades which.... every actiony rougelike wants to be Hades. This is an actiony roguelike. It has a few interesting mechanics. You win each round by igniting a hearth, but the resource to do that is also your health. Thus how much you ignite and when can be strategic, and getting pummeled by enemies can slow down your progress by giving you fewer resources. The gameplay felt fluid and polished, but it was very simple. You have one attack to spam, and one special to cast on a cooldown, and that's about it. There wasn't much in the way of engagement or difficulty so it felt like a very casual game you could sleepwalk through. Would that be the case in later levels? I don't know. I kinda sorta liked this but kinda sorta thought it was too simple.

Chants of Sennaar - This game is aimed straight at my nerd core. It basically steals the concept of Inkle's Heaven's Vault for the language mechanics. You come across numerous gylphs, and are given an interface where you can type in your guess as to their meaning. Using those guesses you then work on solving puzzles. The art design is beautiful, minimalist and vector-like, and working out the language was fun. My main gripe was that the game also provides you with a hint system by way of a notebook, that shows you pictures and then confirms your guesses if you put the right glyph next to the right picture. The pictures themselves give away the game too much and then being able to brute force glyphs into this hint system to get free answers also sucks. There have been some requests in the feedback of the demo already to make it possible to hide this whole system so people can play without getting spoiled so easily, and I'm with them. Out of all the demos this is the game I might pick up. I considered getting Heaven's Vault when it came out, but the reviews complained of slow walking and tedious elements outside of the language deciphering so I haven't bothered. This game might be a nice alternative.

I've been playing some more video games. Spoilers for Mass Effect 3 below.

There's another Demo event going on on Steam so the gang and I are poking around. So far we've played:

Arcade Party: You just play a bunch of brief and extremely simple little arcade games. You all try to beat them but there's no real coop or competition in the mechanics. Everyone has to complete their version independently. It's stuff like, play some digital labyrinth. Survive a little bullet hell. Complete a puzzle. The better score you get overall the more damage you do to the boss and if anyone fails you lose a life until game over. The games were super fucking easy for the most part, and we were already seeing duplicates within one short playthrough. Meh game. Maybe ok for those who are looking for something easy to play with a group of casual friends.

Super Raft Boat Together: A bullet hell where you're cartoon people on a raft. The enemies break the raft and you have to build it back up while shooting them. It was simple and fun. I don't know if there's much depth but was good for a quick play.

Desynched: My friends were saying it's like a bad factorio. I've never played factorio or any of the games like it, so I can't compare. It's a little janky. The UI was difficult to parse, it was hard to tell if automation was working or if it wasn't why not at times, but I thought it was interesting and had some potential. You're building a base, collecting resources, building stuff and upgrading etc. Maybe I should try factorio since I kind of liked this? It called itself a coop but all that means is being able to control a base together. I might go back and try this solo a little bit.

Void Train: My friends downloaded this, played it, and gave up on it before I had finished downloading. They announced that it was a shitty Raft and they had not enjoyed Raft

Matt and Trey's Puzzle Compound: Up to 4 person escape room. It was actually a decent escape room with some fun puzzles. We all enjoyed it! If they come out with more maps I might buy them so the group can play them.

King of the Castle: This one was actually a lot of fun. It's a big crowd game meant for streaming and 1000s of participating viewers but we only had 4 people and it worked pretty good still. I think that may be the bare minimum. Only one person plays the game and they stream it to the rest. They play a new monarch, who needs to make decisions about how to run their kingdom. The rest of the observers are sorted into three regions, each with their own goals and stats, which are attempting to depose the monarch and become the ruling family. During events there some sort of conflict. For example. Two regions are arguing over who has rights to a mine, or a noble has killed another and is arguing that it was a duel, but the others are pushing for a trial. The decision about what to do is made via a vote from all of the regions, but the monarch can manipulate it by doing things like vetoing, flagging their preferred choice, forcing people to vote for their least preferred option and having the option with the least votes win, and so on. The monarch also breaks ties. After the decision has been made there is some fallout, stats change and so on.

We had a lot of fun doing this, fighting over who should be screwed over, holding grudges over past decisions, and trying to argue against giving one side or another too much of an advantage. When it comes out I hope there are some streamers that play it because I will want to see how it operates in the larger crowds that it's intended for.